Walking onto the dimly lit soundstage where the cast and crew were already hard at work filming, a loud booming voice rose above the ambient noise. It was the distinct, powerful voice of David Harbour, fully submersed in character. Even just hearing his voice was enough to believe Harbour the right choice for Hellboy, but being able to peer through the doorway of the Osiris Club trophy room, just one of many impressive set pieces by production designed Paul Kirby, and see Harbour in full makeup and costume made it without question: David Harbour is the Hellboy that fans of Mike Mignola’s comic book always wanted to see on screen.

Harbour got his start on Broadway, before transitioning into television and film, but it was his flawed, almost anti-hero role as Chief Jim Hopper on Stranger Things that made the world sit up and take notice of the actor. For the filmmakers behind Hellboy, Stranger Things made their choice on who should fill the Red Hand of Doom easy. Producer Lloyd Levin shares there was no other choice for the character, explaining, “It was a very quick process, and it happened to all of us kind of instantaneously. We all watched Stranger Things, and it was sort of like, coffee and contemplation at that moment. A lightning bolt went off for everyone: David Harbour. Hellboy. Mike [Mignola] and his wife saw the show at the same time and had the same exact thought.

Everyone involved, as soon as they saw Stranger Things, just said, ‘Well, wouldn’t he be a good Hellboy?’ He was the first person and only person we approached.”

Though, being approached to play the character stirred up mixed emotions for Harbour, “That’s very flattering and very horrifying that you guys would think that I would be this angry demon, but it seems to fit. So I read the script, and it was a very early draft of the script, and it was not terrible. I was really excited about that, because the script has gone through a lot of iterations, they’ve done a lot of work on it, but to me, the superhero mythos is so big in our culture now, and of course, I want to be a part of that. So when I read the script that’s what excited me, it wasn’t like those Marvel movies that we see. It was very different, but it had a very compelling story and it was very in line with the graphic novels that I had been introduced to in my early twenties. So it was a lot darker. It was a lot scarier than those superhero movies are in general.”

As excited as he was about the dark nature of the new reboot, Harbour felt trepidation following the footsteps of Ron Perlman’s work with the character, telling us, “Ron Perlman did a terrific job and is a great actor, so I knew that stepping in to this- I didn’t want people to feel like…I was scared that people would feel like this was a fuck you to those guys and what they’d done. So I was nervous about that.”

Realizing that he could bring something unique to the project, Harbour dove head first into the character, making it his own. When asked to describe his version of Hellboy, Harbour grinned and stated, “The terrible version of it is angsty, and the great version of it is tortured, I would say. In the original Hellboy movies, I feel like he’s very much a guy that has a sense of humor and goes about his job and does his thing; he deals with the demons and the evil in the world. In our movie, he’s very much dealing with his own being ostracized from society; there’s kind of a Frankenstein element to it. There’s an element of, I think, a lot more self-hatred. Although those movies did explore certain aspects of that, ours is just a lot darker in terms of a character piece, in terms of who he is. He’s a much more tortured guy that has to do the right thing. In the end, he is destined to be the Beast of the Apocalypse, so one of our goals is to justify the temptations of that destiny, in terms of the creation of that world whereas a demon he might be accepted. As a monster, he might be accepted. That he doesn’t feel in this [human] world.”

But it’s not all tortured pathos for this iteration of the character; Harbour touches upon the grisly horror nature of the film and the intricate action sequences involved by adding, “Our world is created by Neil Marshall, and so it’s a darker, more gothic horror world, and it’s brutal. In terms of the fights, I’ve never had to do such intense stunt work in my whole life. The fights are crazy. They’re bloody; there’s really the sense that you’re actually killing things. Even if they are giants or monsters, you’re chopping their heads off; you’re bathing in their blood, and you’re feeling the complex feelings of actually cutting the heart out of another thing.

“We’re taking the time to deal with the fact that Hellboy is a killer.

“He’s truly a weapon. I think we spend a little more time on that. And just in terms of the color and the look of it, even in the images released, he’s darker, he’s more muscular, more intense, more angular, and the color palette is more to the comics’. We bathe it in a lot of blue light and yellow light, and the color itself of the character; he’s the only red object in the frame a lot of times, so it has an aesthetic that is really interesting. So it feels a little more of the Mike Mignola comic than the Guillermo del Toro fantastic universe.”

It’s Harbour’s passion for both the character itself and the film that makes him perfect for the job, but that’s only enhanced further by just how intimidating the Hellboy makeup is. Joel Harlow didn’t set out to make such a scary version, it happened naturally. When speaking about what his directive was on creating the new look, he shares, “The angle is really just going back to the source material, going back to Mike’s illustrations. Not just his illustrations but the way Hellboy is treated in his stories. He’s very down to Earth. I wanted to take it as far away from his comic book look as possible and keep him grounded in reality, which is why he’s got hair on his arms and hair on his chest, and scars. He’s described as having a body of an MMA fighter so you’re going to get scars, you’re going to get beat up, and we’ve all got scars just from our daily routine. So somebody like that is going to be even more so, more weathered and more distressed. That was kind of our jumping off point, and then as far as the structure of the face it was always going back to Mike’s illustrations, keeping the aesthetic, that sort of hard line look that Mike had established with Hellboy. Just keeping that in the forefront of our design as we translated it.”

This Hellboy might have the massive, menacing body of an MMA fighter, but the character is anything but. Having to do a lot more stunt work than he originally thought, Harbour has become well versed in the physicality of the character, especially due to the practical effect nature of director Neil Marshall’s work. Proving that respecting the source material is never far from his mind, Harbour adds, “But I do find that what was really interesting about Hellboy, and I’ve been doing a lot of work with second unit, too, is that a lot of it is not CG, a lot of it is practical.

“The whole suit is practical, the whole look is practical, and a lot of these fights are practical.”

He continues. “I mean, there are some bigger spectacle things that are going to have to be CG, but even when they do that, most of the running around that I’m doing is me. So, one of the things that I like about him is that he’s a really messy fighter. I wanted him to be strong, but I didn’t want him to be like a trained MMA guy. He doesn’t have a lot of training as a fighter, he’s just big and strong and scary and almost like a pub brawler. So, one of the things that have been really fun about the fights is that he messes up a lot. And one of the things that’s fun with me, because I really enjoyed that aspect of him, is that the stunt guys will do it perfectly and then I’ll come in to get tighter stuff, where I’ll just be slipping and falling and coughing up shit, so it has a real feel to it that’s very, very messy, which is something that I like. You know, part of the problems that I have with the CGI world that we live in now is that things feel very inconsequential, like a car blows up on a guy, or he runs up a wall and falls back on a car, what would that do to your spine? So one of the great things about this movie is that, even though he does have tremendous regenerative powers and he’s a lot stronger, we have moments where it hurts.”

To further illustrate how big of a fan of Mignola’s comics Harbour is, he demonstrates an understanding of the fanbase that perhaps the previous films didn’t quite get by sharing, “There were a couple things that I can’t tell you that we know fans really want to see, which we put in the movie, one of them that I can tell you about, clearly, is the hooves. The hooves were a big deal to me, too. The one thing that we can’t do that I really wanted to do is have him in shorts. We didn’t put him in shorts, because the actual time that requires meant we couldn’t actually shoot the movie. Or it would have to be all CG, and you don’t want that.”

With such a larger than life character, there’s a risk of following Marvel’s footsteps in their inability to really flesh out a villain that holds up to their superheroes. When asked about Hellboy’s main adversary, director Neil Marshall says of the Blood Queen, “Then you need someone as brilliant as Milla [Jovovich] to come and hold her own against that. And it is difficult, because he’s such a presence. He’s a huge great red demon guy, and Milla comes in and can just stand next to him and, not drown him out, but you know she’s there and a total presence and you feel it in every beat and every word she says; every moment and every look she gives him. It’s like, okay, he’s got his work cut out for him with her. She’s amazing, she’s just been fun to work with; such a pleasure. And delivers an absolute powerhouse performance. I wouldn’t say it took us by surprise, but it certainly put big smiles on our faces. We knew she was going to be great, and she delivered ten-fold.”

Stay tuned for more insights from the Hellboy set.

Milla Jovovich as ‘Nimue the Blood Queen’ and Penelope Mitchell as ‘Ganeida’ in Hellboy. Photo Credit: Mark Rogers.